How many readers?
So as the new year starts I thought I would try to work out how popular UK blogging is. Now I don't really care about 'what I did today' blogs (though I like them), so I have been discussing with various bloggers how many readers they think 'UK political blogs' get a day. Now first there is clearly (at least) three definitional problems. First, what are 'political blogs'? I don't think it's a problem of whether a blog is political or not, I think, like camels, I know one when I see one. More difficult is that every so often I come across brilliant researched, beautifully presented, constantly updated political blogs that I never knew existed. Second what is a 'daily reader'? I use some blogs a lot for their links to other blogs, often even just the ones at the side not in a particular post. I also check, for various reasons (including links I can't be bothered to bookmark), my own blog about five times a day. Furthermore the various counting systems are known to be a bit dodgy, there are search engines, mistakes etc. Third, what is 'UK'? For example, samizdata.com seems to take most of its readers from the US. Should they be counted or not?Hence I have no idea. But to have a guess, and looking at various indicators (such as the very incomplete but incomparably useful http://www.truthlaidbear.com/TrafficRanking.php, and also the Amazon one) that if you add it all up you might get to 15,000 to 20,000 readers a day. However applying the caveats I'd lower that to a UK readership (unique) somewhere around 10,000 a day. But surely that might be a major overstatement given that the people who comment on the blogs I read tend to be the same 20-30 people? So wildly adjusting I might say UK political blogs have about 2,500-5000 readers a day. Is this way out of line with other people's views?
For comparison a UK political magazine, such as the New Statesmen gets around 3,000, the Spectator, in its print edition I think gets (per day) somewhere around 9,000, the Guardian 400,000 and the Telegraph over 900,000. (Of course they charge. so as a comparison this is not particularly good)
posted by Matthew @ 1/02/2004 08:56:00 AM
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